Best In Show

Juxtaposing brand-new works right out of the studio with some of her earliest creations as well as iconic never-seen-in-India-before pieces, BHARTI KHER’s new show is a piece de resistance. Curator PETER NAGY speaks to one of India’s foremost contemporary artists about her upcoming exhibit.

- Shahnaz Siganporia

Outspoken and opinionated, Bharti Kher is a noticeable presence when she graces drawing rooms in Delhi and beyond. Her social network is as diverse as the artworks she both creates and collects, encompassing business leaders, culture czars and czarinas, the fashion flock, artists and writers both celebrated and ingénue. She rarely talks about her own work at social dos, preferring instead to discuss politics, art exhibitions, travel and women’s issues. Kher is as vocal in the art world, too—through her art and as a founding member of the Khoj International Artists’ Workshop in 1997, and more recently in a senior advisory position at the resuscitated Jawahar Kala Kendra museum for Contemporary art in Jaipur.

On January 19, a large-scale survey of Kher’s art will inaugurate a new gallery space adjacent to Bikaner House in Delhi. Bikaner House, which housed the offices of the Government of Rajasthan for over 50 years, was renovated to its former royal splendour in 2015 and since then has become the epicentre of Delhi’s cultural life. Next door, a building previously used by the Research and Analysis Wing (India’s foreign intelligence agency) has been turned into a splendid exhibition hall, and Kher’s works will not only fill both floors but also spill out onto its lawns. The show will combine some of her earliest works, made in the 1990s at the very start of her professional career, with brand-new works right out of the studio, sprinkled with some particularly notable achievements that were made for international exhibitions and have never been seen in India before.